Bug#346161: linux-source-2.6.15: serial card (fourport) stopped working

[maximilian attems <maks@sternwelten.at>]

On Sat, 07 Jan 2006, Andreas Degert wrote:

>  - only ttyS0 and ttyS1 are detected by the driver
>  - ttyS4 - ttyS7 are set with setserial in a boot script (which works
>    for Debian kernel 2.6.12, but not Debian kernel 2.6.15)
> 
> Some more search in the Internet revealed:
> 
> If you look at the changes for drivers/serial/Kconfig between 2.6.12
> and 2.6.13 (e.g.
> http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.6/13/drivers/serial/Kconfig) you'll
> find the following part
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> config SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS
> -   int "Maximum number of non-legacy 8250/16550 serial ports"
> +   int "Maximum number of 8250/16550 serial ports"
>     depends on SERIAL_8250
>     default "4"
> -   ---help---
> -     Set this to the number of non-legacy serial ports you want
> -     the driver to support.  This includes any ports discovered
> -     via ACPI or PCI enumeration and any ports that may be added
> -     at run-time via hot-plug.
> +   help
> +     Set this to the number of serial ports you want the driver
> +     to support.  This includes any ports discovered via ACPI or
> +     PCI enumeration and any ports that may be added at run-time
> +     via hot-plug, or any ISA multi-port serial cards.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This means SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS (slightly) changed its meaning, starting
> with linux 2.6.13. To get the old behaviour, the number should be
> increased by the number of legacy serial ports (which I think is 4 for
> PC's, COM1 to COM4 in DOS-speak).
> 
> I don't think it makes much sense to set
> 
> config SERIAL_8250_MANY_PORTS
>         bool "Support more than 4 legacy serial ports"
> 
> to "y" (which the Debian configuration does) and at the same time
> set the maximum number of serial ports to 4.

i guess the majority of user would complain about the profileration
of /dev/tty's on their udev boxes.
there is a patch that went after 2.6.15 in the mainline kernel
that allows a boot configuration of that paramater you could set it
to eight, i'm inclined to put it in 2.6.15-3
we have already lots of changes for 2.6.15-2 so will take a week or so.
 
> thanks for your fast response!

thanks for your clear words. :)

-- 
maks